June 27, 2025 • 17 mins
Matteo Franceschetti CEO and Co-Founder of Eight Sleep | CEO's You Should Know
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone, and welcome to this week's edition of CEOs.
You should know this is Steve Dalla's not your host,
and I'm thrilled to be joined by Mateo, the CEO
and founder of eight Sleep.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Mateo, thanks for being here today.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
Oh, thank you for having me. I'm really excited.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Absolutely, I'm excited too. So eight Sleep is the world's
first sleep fitness company focused on optimizing sleep to enhance
him potential. So tell us a little bit about that.
How you came up with the idea for eight Sleep.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Yeah, sure, so we invented technologies. We use AI and
technologies to improve your sleep. Everything started because first I
used to be an athlete when I was a teenager,
so I played a lot of tennis, almost any sports
that you can think of at a competitive level. And
then around ten years ago, I started wondering, why on
musk is taking me to Mars and I still spend
a third of my life on a piece of dumb foam.
(00:44):
There is no technology in my bed. I go to
bed every single day and I pretend to wake up
eight hours later fully refreshed, and there is literally nothing.
The last invention in inform was in nineteen sixty six.
I believe when the invented memory form, other than that,
there was no improvement in our bedroom and no real technology,
(01:06):
and so we came up with an idea. And that
idea now is based on three pillars. One is temperature,
and so we have what we call full immersive temperature,
so we change your body temperature during the night based
on your sleep stages to improve your sleep. Second, we
invented what is called zero gravity elevation, So we invented
a technology that raises your head when you're snoring or
(01:28):
it helps you sleep in zero gravity, relieving releasing pressure
on your back. And the last one is surround sounds,
so we are able to place certain sounds before you
fall asleep or while you're asleep to improve your sleep performance.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
That's incredible.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Who would have thought that there's been no innovations there
since then.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah, and you know, with our lives, lives become more
and more hectic. You know, we have very intense jobs
and you just go to bed and you put tend
to wake up fully refreshed, but your body and body
sometimes needs a little bit of help. Technology and AI,
particularly right now, they are the perfect feet for all.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
These that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
I know you mentioned that you're a competitive athlete and
you did skiing, tennis, car racing, you name.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
It was there a particular moment.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
That it clicked to you that this was needed, Like
this update to the way that you were sleeping was warranted.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yeah, I was saying, there were two times. One when
when I was a kid, right and I had to recover.
I was playing a lot of tennis tournaments, and I
immediately understood the importance of sleep.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
And then it's something like I had a pose on
my brain and I woke up again. Twenty years later,
And as I started aging and I was in my
early thirties, I started wondering, wise, there is no technology sure,
and how can I compress my sleep? How can I
sleep faster? And at the same time I started having
(02:50):
sleep problems. I have restless legs, and I say, wise,
there is nothing helping me, and there is no one
studying the problem. And that is how everything started.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
You know eight sleep seeing tremendous growth since twenty twenty
and you're unveiling a new next gen Pod five. What
do you think is the key to maintaining innovation in
this category? And how do you ensure that new products
are constantly pushed out.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Well, we tend to release a new product almost every year,
so we have a very intense schedule and sometimes my
team complaints with me, but at the same time, customers
are really happy. And in a matter of five years
we went from Pod one to POD five and the
latest generation, and it's really good for us because with
each generation we can learn from our customers what they like,
(03:36):
what they don't like. At the same time, when you're
releasing your door product, you don't want to introduce too
many features at the same time because you need to
support them, and so if you can just sequence them
at a high pace, that's the best way to evolve
as a business as a company, and then obviously the
company grows, so you generate more profit and you can
invest more in R and D.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Sure, what are some of the new invancements in Pod five?
Speaker 3 (03:59):
There are a couple of The really cool one is
what we call immersive temperature. So the previous parts were
just a mattress cover that you could install onto any
mattress and it would control the temperature of each side
of the bed. Now Pot five comes also with a
hidro blanket which is TERMO regulated and so it really
becomes an immersive temperature that surrounds you like a microclimate
(04:22):
top to bottom, so you have temperature above you and
underneath your body. Seconds. There is an evolution of the
elevation which becomes more intelligent for snowy mitigation and zero gravity.
And then we have surround sounds, so we are able
to play these soundscapes that help you to fall asleep
or stay asleep. We also have a partnership with Dottor
(04:44):
Andrew Euberman and so there is a list of an
SDR files and SDR is a non sleep deepress, a
sort of meditation with his voice that you can play
to fall asleep. And the last innovation connected to AI,
we are introducing new sensors what is called health Tier,
which is a software feature, and this software feature will
(05:04):
be able to detect if you're getting sick a couple
of days before you're sick wow, and will be able
to track any a normally in your heart rate and
respiration and so it's almost like having a full picture
of your health in your app and you can just
check it every day.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
That's incredible, Yeah, very very cool investments, I know you
mentioned the partnership, and I know some of your other
partnership is your collaboration with professional professional athletes. Obviously yourself
a former professional athlete kind of the reason behind its
sleep but you guys currently work with over three hundred
different professional athletes. How do you see that intersection between
the sleep optimization and the athletic performance really shaping the
(05:43):
future of health A wellness.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Yeah, so first of all, we yeah, we have one
hundreds and hundreds of athletes. We have a couple that
are very close to us, a real brand ambassadors like
Chess Leclerc, the Formula one Ferrari driver and tailor Fret,
who is I think right now number four in the
world the number one American tennis player, so pretty cool
(06:06):
stars and all the times that I talk to them,
athletes nowadays are so aware of the importance of sleep
for a couple of reasons, first for their performance physical
and cognitive performance, but second also for the risk of injury.
And so it's incredible how aware they are. And one
of the things sometimes I share when I get interviewed
(06:26):
is also even for the average customer, the awareness around
sleep is completely different than ten years ago when we
started and I would say the sleep deprivation is the
new smoking. Meaning if you go back ten fifteen years ago,
there were the match of CEO who would say I
sleep only three hours a day. I sleep when I'm dead.
I don't need to sleep anymore. But now, if you
start conveying that message to your team, you are perceived
(06:49):
like almost like the type of person who is smoking
and eating junk food and taking care of themselves.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Right, And so there is almost this limit where yeah,
maybe you want still pushing your career, but you need
to take care of your health. You need to take
care of what you eat, how you sleep, and how
much you train. And we are just leveraging that topic.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
And I know that the importance of sleep is in
a lot of different factors. Right to your point, it
helps you live longer, it helps you stay healthier, it
helps you be more productive in your day to day.
How do you really envision that continuing in the next
decade and continuing that message to be top of mind?
Like you said, it's kind of like if you have
bad sleep, you're the new smoker. How do you plan
to continue that positivity around getting the right amount of sleep?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yeah. So the interesting thing is almost eighty percent of
adults they have some degree some sleep problems. The point is,
until a few years ago, sleeper was not a topic
and people were not talking about their problems. And these
problems might be very simple. You just had a kid.
I mean, you just had the baby, and so you
can't sleep, and you and your partners struggle.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Trust me, I have a one year old who's doing
all four of his molars right now. So I did
not sleep between midnight and three o'clock last night.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
So I hear you.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Another thing we see with our product seventy percent eighty
percent of couples. They struggle because they chew different partners,
they have different temperature preferences, women in menopouse, or women
during their pregnancy or during their period, or with hormonal changes,
and so at the end of the day, each of us.
I mean, you can walk on the street and probably
ninety nine percent of the people you see around you
(08:20):
they're struggling with their sleep. But before they were not
chatting about that. Now they talk about that. And I
think there is an explosion of wearables, which for us
is really good because they educate customers at scale. Sure,
but The problem of wearables is that they help you
understand if you're sleeping well or not, but they don't
actually fix the problem. And that is when we come in.
(08:42):
And so the best case for us eighty percent of
our users they have a wearable, so they are already educated,
They already understand that their sleep needs to be optimized,
and then they look for the only products in the
market that actually improves their sleep, and then they buy
eight Sleep.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense because I myself
here about all the time, Hey were this ring or
this app and it told me I get to ban
it a sleep. But to your point, there's nothing that's
really fixing that right until you guys can.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
And the best thing for us from a market instant
point is they already have their metrics. Then they start
using aid sleep and they see the change in their
metrics and is reported by another wearable or another app,
which is the best way for us to prove that
we are real. Right, it's not our metrics saying oh,
yours live being better. Is someone else approving you before
and after using our device that your sleep is now better.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
They actually get to see the results live, yeah, which
is probably really wording.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
And then when they travel that is the other biggest
a ha moment. So people get used to all our
our system and how we improve your sleep, and then
they travel for the first time, they really miss the device,
particularly temperature, and if they have a wearable, they immediately
see their metrics dropping. And then they go back home
and the metrics improve again and that is when they're sold.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Well, obviously you guys are a leader in innovation around sleep,
especially in the tech space, and I know that you
have received endorsements from innovators like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.
How do these partnerships really align with your long term
vision of the company and how do you plan to
really expand that influence into the well being of others.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Well, the interesting thing is both with Mark and Ilon,
we didn't even know they had a product, so it's
just pure not there organic mentions obviously from some of
the most powerful people in the world, but there are
many others of that caliber that use our product. A
lot of the top CEOs in Silicon Valley, it was
(10:37):
a very large number they sleep on our product. But
we even have top politicians and prime ministers, kings and
of the athletes. But the interesting thing for us is
a very large percentage of our revenue comes to word
of mouth. And so once you start being in the
bed of these people, then they start talking about our
(10:59):
product with their friends, and these people keep buying, and
so is a self fulfilling prophecy where just by building
the best product possible, people will share it with their
friends and then you will get to the best people
in the world. Sleeping on a slip.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Absolutely, that's word of mouth.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Yeah, absolutely, for the product of at our price point,
the amount of word of mouth that is in the
forty fifty percent of our revenue is pretty incredible, and
that is why our marketing costs per user as we grow,
they keep going down your over year, even if the
company is scaling extremely fast.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
That's great. So let's switch gears. Let's talk a little
bit about yourself.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
So obviously we talked about it earlier that you are
a competitive athlete within sports, obviously an entrepreneur. What would
you say are some of the more challenging moments of
your journey and how did those experiences really shape the
leader you are today?
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Well, when you are started in the early days, it
is really hard. Now we got to a point where
we are pretty solid. Do we have a strong balance sheet,
do we have a strong unit economics? But at the beginning,
particularly in hardware, it's very difficult. I would say probably
ninety nine percent of the hardware startups that started with
us back then ten years ago, they're not in business anymore,
(12:12):
or maybe they are in a zombie mode. And so
I think there were a lot of learning lessons about
how we use capital, about the importance of unit economics,
about finding a way to grow efficiently, because there are
different ways in the early days where you can just
grow by throwing money out of the window from a
marketing standpoint, but that is not an efficient and scalable
(12:33):
way to go. And so we had many lessons. I
made many mistakes during these ten years, but we were
able to fix them quickly enough to be here and
be stronger than ever.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Nice congrats.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yeah, So someone's tuning in that is inspiring entrepreneur and
someone that might be looking to be extremely innovative in
a particular space, what advice would you have for them?
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Well, I would say one very important thing for us, honesty,
was the composition of our co founders because we are
three co founders. On one side, there is Max with
our CTO is the kind of engineer who can build
a rocket in the garage in the night. On the
opposite spectrum, we have Alexandra and she runs growth and marketing.
But usually in a lot of funding teams, what you
(13:20):
see is they are all engineers and that is why
they know each other, and so they are very technical,
but they don't understand the marketing part. Or you are
skewed on the opposite side where you have a lot
of great marketers, then they can think and create a
beautiful pitch, but they don't fully understand technology. And I
think having the balance of the chew and then there
is me in the middle. I merely do the coffy,
(13:43):
but yeah, bring it together. But I think what I
bring is discipline and the business sense. And so being
three people that are able to get along attracted talent
while still being so different, I think that is a
part of the secret source of it.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Sleep Yeah recipe for success right there, So talking about
other challenges, obviously the core mission of the company is
to really improve human health and not through better sleep. Right,
how do you balance that by always having that constant
need also for innovation.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yeah, I mean the key is the north star, right,
and so everything that we do needs to improve your sleep.
And by improving your sleep, the second order effect will
be that we will extend your longevity, lifespan, health pun
and you will just live a better life. And so
when we look at the product roadmap, everything is designed
(14:38):
around that. We try to identify all the problems that
our customers have in sleep, we try to fix them.
Then you balance that with the roadmap that I actually
wrote in twenty seventeen. In twenty seventeen, I've wrote a
memo about the future of sleep, and I outline what
we wanted to build in terms of about discanning and
(14:59):
also the ability to control all the environmental factors while
you're asleep. Because if you oversimplify what we want to
do or two things. We want to compress your sleep.
So what if you could sleep only six hours and
get more rest than when you were sleeping eight hours.
We want to give you two hours back while you're
still feeling great and you're very healthy. Then even if
you sleep only six hours, there's still a lot of time.
(15:19):
And so I started thinking what else can we do,
and we need to transform your bed in the most
advanced health machine ever built because there is a lot
of space. You're standing still in the same place every
single night, is plugged to the wall, so we don't
have battery problems, and there is Wi Fi. And so
we're working on technology for a full body scanning and
you should imagine that in the next few years your
(15:40):
body will be able to scan, so your bed will
be able to scan your body every single night to
detect the development of certain health conditions while also enhancing
your sleep.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
That's incredible. Yeah, I'm going to look forward to it. Jeez.
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Yeah, and it's really happening perily with the eye. Everything
is just accelerating.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
What sounds like a lot of exciting developments on the
horizon for eight Sleep. Is there anything that we might
not have covered?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
What's next?
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Well, we'll keep innovating in terms of products. Obviously POT
five is the next biggest release. We recently also introduce
a first line of supplements that help you fall asleep,
and we developed those with doctor Peter Atilla, which is
a longevity expert. And you should imagine more products in
(16:28):
that segment coming out because again, at the end of
the day, the typical problems of our customers or everyone
in sleep are around temperature. Their mind is racing and
so that then the supplements, and then is around sleep happenia,
which is the other big thing we want to tackle.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
It's great tackling every single issue someone could possibly have.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Yeah, so everyone can sleep better and then they can
get more out of their lives.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Well, we covered a lot, but is there one key
message or takeaway for anyone tuning in that you want
everyone to know about its mission.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Well, our job is to improve your sleep. So if
you want to improve your sleep, check check eightsleep dot com.
We have a combination of different products. Whatever is the
problem you have or whatever you want to improve in
your sleep, I think we can do it for you.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Well, I'm definitely gonna check it out. Mateo.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Thank you so much for being here today. Really insightful conversation,
pressive background, and really amazing stuff that you're doing within
the sleep industry. So thank you, thank you, thank you
everybody for tuning into this week's edition of CEOs. You
should know check out next time.
Hi everyone, and welcome to this week's edition of CEOs.
You should know this is Steve Dalla's not your host,
and I'm thrilled to be joined by Mateo, the CEO
and founder of eight Sleep.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Mateo, thanks for being here today.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
Oh, thank you for having me. I'm really excited.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Absolutely, I'm excited too. So eight Sleep is the world's
first sleep fitness company focused on optimizing sleep to enhance
him potential. So tell us a little bit about that.
How you came up with the idea for eight Sleep.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Yeah, sure, so we invented technologies. We use AI and
technologies to improve your sleep. Everything started because first I
used to be an athlete when I was a teenager,
so I played a lot of tennis, almost any sports
that you can think of at a competitive level. And
then around ten years ago, I started wondering, why on
musk is taking me to Mars and I still spend
a third of my life on a piece of dumb foam.
(00:44):
There is no technology in my bed. I go to
bed every single day and I pretend to wake up
eight hours later fully refreshed, and there is literally nothing.
The last invention in inform was in nineteen sixty six.
I believe when the invented memory form, other than that,
there was no improvement in our bedroom and no real technology,
(01:06):
and so we came up with an idea. And that
idea now is based on three pillars. One is temperature,
and so we have what we call full immersive temperature,
so we change your body temperature during the night based
on your sleep stages to improve your sleep. Second, we
invented what is called zero gravity elevation, So we invented
a technology that raises your head when you're snoring or
(01:28):
it helps you sleep in zero gravity, relieving releasing pressure
on your back. And the last one is surround sounds,
so we are able to place certain sounds before you
fall asleep or while you're asleep to improve your sleep performance.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
That's incredible.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Who would have thought that there's been no innovations there
since then.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah, and you know, with our lives, lives become more
and more hectic. You know, we have very intense jobs
and you just go to bed and you put tend
to wake up fully refreshed, but your body and body
sometimes needs a little bit of help. Technology and AI,
particularly right now, they are the perfect feet for all.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
These that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
I know you mentioned that you're a competitive athlete and
you did skiing, tennis, car racing, you name.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
It was there a particular moment.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
That it clicked to you that this was needed, Like
this update to the way that you were sleeping was warranted.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yeah, I was saying, there were two times. One when
when I was a kid, right and I had to recover.
I was playing a lot of tennis tournaments, and I
immediately understood the importance of sleep.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
And then it's something like I had a pose on
my brain and I woke up again. Twenty years later,
And as I started aging and I was in my
early thirties, I started wondering, wise, there is no technology sure,
and how can I compress my sleep? How can I
sleep faster? And at the same time I started having
(02:50):
sleep problems. I have restless legs, and I say, wise,
there is nothing helping me, and there is no one
studying the problem. And that is how everything started.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
You know eight sleep seeing tremendous growth since twenty twenty
and you're unveiling a new next gen Pod five. What
do you think is the key to maintaining innovation in
this category? And how do you ensure that new products
are constantly pushed out.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Well, we tend to release a new product almost every year,
so we have a very intense schedule and sometimes my
team complaints with me, but at the same time, customers
are really happy. And in a matter of five years
we went from Pod one to POD five and the
latest generation, and it's really good for us because with
each generation we can learn from our customers what they like,
(03:36):
what they don't like. At the same time, when you're
releasing your door product, you don't want to introduce too
many features at the same time because you need to
support them, and so if you can just sequence them
at a high pace, that's the best way to evolve
as a business as a company, and then obviously the
company grows, so you generate more profit and you can
invest more in R and D.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Sure, what are some of the new invancements in Pod five?
Speaker 3 (03:59):
There are a couple of The really cool one is
what we call immersive temperature. So the previous parts were
just a mattress cover that you could install onto any
mattress and it would control the temperature of each side
of the bed. Now Pot five comes also with a
hidro blanket which is TERMO regulated and so it really
becomes an immersive temperature that surrounds you like a microclimate
(04:22):
top to bottom, so you have temperature above you and
underneath your body. Seconds. There is an evolution of the
elevation which becomes more intelligent for snowy mitigation and zero gravity.
And then we have surround sounds, so we are able
to play these soundscapes that help you to fall asleep
or stay asleep. We also have a partnership with Dottor
(04:44):
Andrew Euberman and so there is a list of an
SDR files and SDR is a non sleep deepress, a
sort of meditation with his voice that you can play
to fall asleep. And the last innovation connected to AI,
we are introducing new sensors what is called health Tier,
which is a software feature, and this software feature will
(05:04):
be able to detect if you're getting sick a couple
of days before you're sick wow, and will be able
to track any a normally in your heart rate and
respiration and so it's almost like having a full picture
of your health in your app and you can just
check it every day.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
That's incredible, Yeah, very very cool investments, I know you
mentioned the partnership, and I know some of your other
partnership is your collaboration with professional professional athletes. Obviously yourself
a former professional athlete kind of the reason behind its
sleep but you guys currently work with over three hundred
different professional athletes. How do you see that intersection between
the sleep optimization and the athletic performance really shaping the
(05:43):
future of health A wellness.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Yeah, so first of all, we yeah, we have one
hundreds and hundreds of athletes. We have a couple that
are very close to us, a real brand ambassadors like
Chess Leclerc, the Formula one Ferrari driver and tailor Fret,
who is I think right now number four in the
world the number one American tennis player, so pretty cool
(06:06):
stars and all the times that I talk to them,
athletes nowadays are so aware of the importance of sleep
for a couple of reasons, first for their performance physical
and cognitive performance, but second also for the risk of injury.
And so it's incredible how aware they are. And one
of the things sometimes I share when I get interviewed
(06:26):
is also even for the average customer, the awareness around
sleep is completely different than ten years ago when we
started and I would say the sleep deprivation is the
new smoking. Meaning if you go back ten fifteen years ago,
there were the match of CEO who would say I
sleep only three hours a day. I sleep when I'm dead.
I don't need to sleep anymore. But now, if you
start conveying that message to your team, you are perceived
(06:49):
like almost like the type of person who is smoking
and eating junk food and taking care of themselves.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Right, And so there is almost this limit where yeah,
maybe you want still pushing your career, but you need
to take care of your health. You need to take
care of what you eat, how you sleep, and how
much you train. And we are just leveraging that topic.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
And I know that the importance of sleep is in
a lot of different factors. Right to your point, it
helps you live longer, it helps you stay healthier, it
helps you be more productive in your day to day.
How do you really envision that continuing in the next
decade and continuing that message to be top of mind?
Like you said, it's kind of like if you have
bad sleep, you're the new smoker. How do you plan
to continue that positivity around getting the right amount of sleep?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yeah. So the interesting thing is almost eighty percent of
adults they have some degree some sleep problems. The point is,
until a few years ago, sleeper was not a topic
and people were not talking about their problems. And these
problems might be very simple. You just had a kid.
I mean, you just had the baby, and so you
can't sleep, and you and your partners struggle.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Trust me, I have a one year old who's doing
all four of his molars right now. So I did
not sleep between midnight and three o'clock last night.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
So I hear you.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Another thing we see with our product seventy percent eighty
percent of couples. They struggle because they chew different partners,
they have different temperature preferences, women in menopouse, or women
during their pregnancy or during their period, or with hormonal changes,
and so at the end of the day, each of us.
I mean, you can walk on the street and probably
ninety nine percent of the people you see around you
(08:20):
they're struggling with their sleep. But before they were not
chatting about that. Now they talk about that. And I
think there is an explosion of wearables, which for us
is really good because they educate customers at scale. Sure,
but The problem of wearables is that they help you
understand if you're sleeping well or not, but they don't
actually fix the problem. And that is when we come in.
(08:42):
And so the best case for us eighty percent of
our users they have a wearable, so they are already educated,
They already understand that their sleep needs to be optimized,
and then they look for the only products in the
market that actually improves their sleep, and then they buy
eight Sleep.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense because I myself
here about all the time, Hey were this ring or
this app and it told me I get to ban
it a sleep. But to your point, there's nothing that's
really fixing that right until you guys can.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
And the best thing for us from a market instant
point is they already have their metrics. Then they start
using aid sleep and they see the change in their
metrics and is reported by another wearable or another app,
which is the best way for us to prove that
we are real. Right, it's not our metrics saying oh,
yours live being better. Is someone else approving you before
and after using our device that your sleep is now better.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
They actually get to see the results live, yeah, which
is probably really wording.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
And then when they travel that is the other biggest
a ha moment. So people get used to all our
our system and how we improve your sleep, and then
they travel for the first time, they really miss the device,
particularly temperature, and if they have a wearable, they immediately
see their metrics dropping. And then they go back home
and the metrics improve again and that is when they're sold.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Well, obviously you guys are a leader in innovation around sleep,
especially in the tech space, and I know that you
have received endorsements from innovators like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.
How do these partnerships really align with your long term
vision of the company and how do you plan to
really expand that influence into the well being of others.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Well, the interesting thing is both with Mark and Ilon,
we didn't even know they had a product, so it's
just pure not there organic mentions obviously from some of
the most powerful people in the world, but there are
many others of that caliber that use our product. A
lot of the top CEOs in Silicon Valley, it was
(10:37):
a very large number they sleep on our product. But
we even have top politicians and prime ministers, kings and
of the athletes. But the interesting thing for us is
a very large percentage of our revenue comes to word
of mouth. And so once you start being in the
bed of these people, then they start talking about our
(10:59):
product with their friends, and these people keep buying, and
so is a self fulfilling prophecy where just by building
the best product possible, people will share it with their
friends and then you will get to the best people
in the world. Sleeping on a slip.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Absolutely, that's word of mouth.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Yeah, absolutely, for the product of at our price point,
the amount of word of mouth that is in the
forty fifty percent of our revenue is pretty incredible, and
that is why our marketing costs per user as we grow,
they keep going down your over year, even if the
company is scaling extremely fast.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
That's great. So let's switch gears. Let's talk a little
bit about yourself.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
So obviously we talked about it earlier that you are
a competitive athlete within sports, obviously an entrepreneur. What would
you say are some of the more challenging moments of
your journey and how did those experiences really shape the
leader you are today?
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Well, when you are started in the early days, it
is really hard. Now we got to a point where
we are pretty solid. Do we have a strong balance sheet,
do we have a strong unit economics? But at the beginning,
particularly in hardware, it's very difficult. I would say probably
ninety nine percent of the hardware startups that started with
us back then ten years ago, they're not in business anymore,
(12:12):
or maybe they are in a zombie mode. And so
I think there were a lot of learning lessons about
how we use capital, about the importance of unit economics,
about finding a way to grow efficiently, because there are
different ways in the early days where you can just
grow by throwing money out of the window from a
marketing standpoint, but that is not an efficient and scalable
(12:33):
way to go. And so we had many lessons. I
made many mistakes during these ten years, but we were
able to fix them quickly enough to be here and
be stronger than ever.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Nice congrats.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yeah, So someone's tuning in that is inspiring entrepreneur and
someone that might be looking to be extremely innovative in
a particular space, what advice would you have for them?
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Well, I would say one very important thing for us, honesty,
was the composition of our co founders because we are
three co founders. On one side, there is Max with
our CTO is the kind of engineer who can build
a rocket in the garage in the night. On the
opposite spectrum, we have Alexandra and she runs growth and marketing.
But usually in a lot of funding teams, what you
(13:20):
see is they are all engineers and that is why
they know each other, and so they are very technical,
but they don't understand the marketing part. Or you are
skewed on the opposite side where you have a lot
of great marketers, then they can think and create a
beautiful pitch, but they don't fully understand technology. And I
think having the balance of the chew and then there
is me in the middle. I merely do the coffy,
(13:43):
but yeah, bring it together. But I think what I
bring is discipline and the business sense. And so being
three people that are able to get along attracted talent
while still being so different, I think that is a
part of the secret source of it.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Sleep Yeah recipe for success right there, So talking about
other challenges, obviously the core mission of the company is
to really improve human health and not through better sleep. Right,
how do you balance that by always having that constant
need also for innovation.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yeah, I mean the key is the north star, right,
and so everything that we do needs to improve your sleep.
And by improving your sleep, the second order effect will
be that we will extend your longevity, lifespan, health pun
and you will just live a better life. And so
when we look at the product roadmap, everything is designed
(14:38):
around that. We try to identify all the problems that
our customers have in sleep, we try to fix them.
Then you balance that with the roadmap that I actually
wrote in twenty seventeen. In twenty seventeen, I've wrote a
memo about the future of sleep, and I outline what
we wanted to build in terms of about discanning and
(14:59):
also the ability to control all the environmental factors while
you're asleep. Because if you oversimplify what we want to
do or two things. We want to compress your sleep.
So what if you could sleep only six hours and
get more rest than when you were sleeping eight hours.
We want to give you two hours back while you're
still feeling great and you're very healthy. Then even if
you sleep only six hours, there's still a lot of time.
(15:19):
And so I started thinking what else can we do,
and we need to transform your bed in the most
advanced health machine ever built because there is a lot
of space. You're standing still in the same place every
single night, is plugged to the wall, so we don't
have battery problems, and there is Wi Fi. And so
we're working on technology for a full body scanning and
you should imagine that in the next few years your
(15:40):
body will be able to scan, so your bed will
be able to scan your body every single night to
detect the development of certain health conditions while also enhancing
your sleep.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
That's incredible. Yeah, I'm going to look forward to it. Jeez.
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Yeah, and it's really happening perily with the eye. Everything
is just accelerating.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
What sounds like a lot of exciting developments on the
horizon for eight Sleep. Is there anything that we might
not have covered?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
What's next?
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Well, we'll keep innovating in terms of products. Obviously POT
five is the next biggest release. We recently also introduce
a first line of supplements that help you fall asleep,
and we developed those with doctor Peter Atilla, which is
a longevity expert. And you should imagine more products in
(16:28):
that segment coming out because again, at the end of
the day, the typical problems of our customers or everyone
in sleep are around temperature. Their mind is racing and
so that then the supplements, and then is around sleep happenia,
which is the other big thing we want to tackle.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
It's great tackling every single issue someone could possibly have.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Yeah, so everyone can sleep better and then they can
get more out of their lives.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Well, we covered a lot, but is there one key
message or takeaway for anyone tuning in that you want
everyone to know about its mission.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Well, our job is to improve your sleep. So if
you want to improve your sleep, check check eightsleep dot com.
We have a combination of different products. Whatever is the
problem you have or whatever you want to improve in
your sleep, I think we can do it for you.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Well, I'm definitely gonna check it out. Mateo.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Thank you so much for being here today. Really insightful conversation,
pressive background, and really amazing stuff that you're doing within
the sleep industry. So thank you, thank you, thank you
everybody for tuning into this week's edition of CEOs. You
should know check out next time.
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